Chances are if you’ve read/watched the news lately you’ve heard the buzz about Twitter, but what I’ve found is that people fall into one of three categories:
1. Have an account, know all about it
2. Know the basics, haven’t jumped on board yet
3. Don’t know what it is, don’t know where to start
If you fall into group #3, here’s a quick guide to get you started.
What is Twitter? Twitter is a social networking service and describes itself as “a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?” Though, since its creation in 2006, it has expanded to encompass so much more than that. Twitter is a stream of “tweets.” A tweet is a simple text post, consisting of 140 characters or less which gets posted on your Twitter profile, and is visible to other Twitter users who’ve subscribed to your updates. These subscribers are known as “followers.” Most people tweet from their computer or cell phone. It may sound a bit overwhelming at first, but it’s really simple once you get started.
How do I create an account? Just visit Twitter.com and click the “get started” button. You’ll only need to enter your name, desired username, and e-mail address. Your Twitter profile is viewable at “www.twitter.com/your_username”.
Following/followers: So now you have a Twitter account, now what? Follow people! (Not as creepy as it sounds!) You won’t get much out of Twitter unless you start following other users. Following someone allows you to view their tweets and if they decide to follow you back, they’ll see yours. You can invite friends and family by clicking the “find people” button on the top of your Twitter profile page. Don’t know anyone using Twitter? Not to worry, there are an endless number of Twitter accounts that you can follow that are incredibly useful. Here is a list of users with the most followers.
UPDATE: and don’t forget to start following us at www.twitter.com/snjagency!
What do @ # mean? @ – When you want to direct a tweet to a specific user you simply type the at sign (@) followed immediately by their username (no spaces). So for example, if you wanted to thank us for this Twitter guide you can just tweet “@snjagency Thanks for helping me get started with Twitter!” and we’ll know you’re talking to us (but remember, everyone else can still see these messages). If you want to send a direct (private) message to a user you can just type “D username” before your message and tweet it. The hashtag (#) is used to allow other Twitterers to search for tweets based on a specific subject. If you wanted to see what people are saying about the recent Swine Flu outbreak you can go to search.twitter.com and type #swineflu into the search field. This will call up all of the recent tweets marked with the #swineflu tag. Tagging a tweet is just as easy as it looks; just type #yoursubject at the end of your tweet (no spaces).
Retweeting: So, lets say someone you are following says something interesting and you want your friends to see it. You can retweet it by copying the tweet you want to share, putting “RT @username” in front of it, and then tweeting it yourself. For example, if you’re following smith&jones and want to share one of our tweets with a friend who isn’t following us, you’d simply tweet “RT @snjagency” followed by our original tweet. That way your followers can see the tweet, and choose to follow the user it originated from. As you can imagine retweeting can help information spread quickly on Twitter.
Links: Since Twitter limits posts to only 140 characters, adding a link may be difficult, as some links can get pretty long. This is where URL shortening services come in. These services will take a link you enter and give you a much shorter link which redirects back to the original site. For example, when shortened this URL
http://www.smithnjones.com/blog/2009/04/portable-city/
becomes
They both take you to the same destination, one’s just a lot shorter, freeing up characters so you can say more. The most popular link shortening services are TinyURL and Bit.ly.
Security: So what if you want to use Twitter, but don’t want everyone in the world seeing what you have to say? You can limit your tweets to be only visible by people you approve by clicking on the “settings” link on the top of your Twitter page. Check off the “protect my updates” box. It’s that easy. Just remember, if you don’t protect your updates everyone can see what you’re saying, so be careful what you tweet – you certainly don’t want to lose your job over it.
So now you’re a Twitter expert, right? Well, don’t worry if some of the details are a bit fuzzy, the best way to learn about Twitter is to just jump in and get started. So what are you waiting for? Sign up and find out what everyone is talking about!